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Film Review: The Story of Tabara (1986) by Girish Kasaravalli

The Story of Tabara Charuhasan

Probably the most celebrated director of the Kannada movie industry, Girish Kasaravali has shot a number of exquisite films, many of which are widely considered as masterpieces. “The Story of Tabara”, which screened at a number of international film festivals including Tashkent, Nantes, Tokyo and the Film Festival of Russia and won National Film Awards for Best Feature and Best Actor, is definitely among those.

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The script is based on the homonymous short story by Poornachandra Tejaswi and focuses on the titular character, Tabara Setty, a low-level public servant, who is about to get his pension. However, a bit before that happens, he is ‘cheated’ into becoming the tax collector for the coffee farmers, something that proves a rather bad idea. For starters, the rich landowners are not about to pay, and since Tabara has only written the receipts, he ends up having to face his higher ups in the bureaucracy level, particularly since the local governor, afraid of losing the merchants’ support, orders him to forgo the taxes. His higher ups, since they see themselves in Tabara, think he has stolen the tax money for himself or he has shared it with the landowners, in a series of events that end up with him having to pay a whole month’s pay in compensation.

In the meantime, and while he is trying to get out of a mess that is definitely not his fault, his wife is diagnosed his diabetes, and prescribed with daily injections, which Tabara frequently cannot afford since his pay is docked. As a solution, he tries to expedite receiving his pension, but the monster of bureaucracy seems to have an even uglier head to rear.

Girish Kasaravali directs a film that deals with the blights of bureaucracy and its consequences, in a way that actually criticizes the whole Indian system. In that fashion, Tabara is a definite kafkaesque hero who tries to make sense of a truly illogical world, while being stuck in the past and the way the British rule days functioned. In the same path, corruption seems to be everywhere, from the lowest to the highest employee, to the landowners and finally the politicians.

That Tabara finds himself in the midst of all this, essentially between the hammer and the anvil, makes him a truly tragic figure, which Kasaravalli ‘exploits’ both to make the aforementioned comments more pointed and to create the dramatic aspect of the movie. Granted, the way fate hits him when he is down, considering what is happening to his wife, does cross into melodramatic territory, but even this element is organically implemented in the narrative, adding even more to the critique of the system.

The combination of the way everyone he is involved with treats him and the way Tabara stoically takes it all, with an uncomfortable smile in his face, is bound to make anyone angry, actually towards both sides, since you would expect him at some point to erupt or even resist a bit. This, however, is actually another comment about how the lower ‘caste’ are essentially stripped of their will to resist, something that does never even crosses their mind, thus becoming, unwillingly, another cog in the system.

This anger, however, even if at times is given with both a dramatic and a comedic approach, actually permeates the whole film, which can easily be described as an angry one. The antithesis with the stoic protagonist, in an exquisitely balanced performance by , is one of the movie’s best traits, which Kasaravalli explores to the fullest both to make the aforementioned comments and to entertain his audience.

Cinematically, the movie is on an equal high level. Madhu Ambat captures the labyrinth the protagonist is stuck in in a way that adds to the suffocation he feels, with the close ups to his eyes and smirk being the ‘poster’ of the movie. L. Vaidyanathan’s music and particularly the main theme that is repeated a number of times works excellently, adding to the sense of despair the protagonist feels and the illogicality of what he faces. M.N. Swamy’s editing results in a mid-tempo that suits the overall aesthetics, but the fact remains that the movie does begin to lag after a point in its repetition, and some trimming would definitely benefit the whole thing.

Apart from this minor issue, however, “The Story of Tabara” is an excellent movie, still relevant today despite its age, and of those titles that could easily be described as timeless, both contextually and cinematically.

About the author

Panos Kotzathanasis

Panagiotis (Panos) Kotzathanasis is a film critic and reviewer, specialized in Asian Cinema. He is the owner and administrator of Asian Movie Pulse, one of the biggest portals dealing with Asian cinema. He is a frequent writer in Hancinema, Taste of Cinema, and his texts can be found in a number of other publications including SIRP in Estonia, Film.sk in Slovakia, Asian Dialogue in the UK, Cinefil in Japan and Filmbuff in India.

Since 2019, he cooperates with Thessaloniki Cinematheque in Greece, curating various tributes to Asian cinema. He has participated, with video recordings and text, on a number of Asian movie releases, for Spectrum, Dekanalog and Error 4444. He has taken part as an expert on the Erasmus+ program, “Asian Cinema Education”, on the Asian Cinema Education International Journalism and Film Criticism Course.

Apart from a member of FIPRESCI and the Greek Cinema Critics Association, he is also a member of NETPAC, the Hellenic Film Academy and the Online Film Critics Association.

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